Now, that makes it hard for dinosaurs to be the ancestors of birds; the descendants would have lived 75 million years before their ancestors.

Some evolutionists claim that birds evolved from running dinosaurs, while others claim that birds evolved from crocodilomorphs, reptiles that glided from trees.1

Each side of this issue has supported its claim by attempts to show why the other must be false. Before going into some of the details, one should note this salient point: if both sides show why the other could not possibly be true, then perhaps BOTH are untrue! Possibly, birds did not evolve from dinosaurs or reptiles at all.

In fact, there is now a position that holds that the opposite occurred—rather than birds evolving from dinosaurs, dinosaurs supposedly evolved from birds.2

It was interesting to find, while perusing a book on evolution, the rather candid admission of an evolutionist that there is no documented evidence of even a single species which arose from another species! Here is the quote:

"...I once asked the eloquent and personable Niles Eldredge whether he knew of any case in which the formation of a new species had been documented. I told him I'd be satisfied if his example were drawn from the laboratory, from the field, or from observations from the fossil record. He could muster only one good example: Theodosius Dobzhansky's experiments with Drosophila, the fruit fly. In this fascinating experiment, populations of fruit flies, bred at progressively hotter temperatures, became genetically separated. After two years or so the hot-bred ones could no longer produce fertile offspring with their cold-breeding brethren. "But," Eldredge quickly added, "That turned out to have something to do with a parasite!" Indeed, it was later discovered that the hot-breeding flies lacked an intracellular symbiotic bacterium found in the cold breeders. Eldredge dismissed this case as an observation of speciation because it entailed a microbial symbiosis! He had been taught, as we all have, that microbes are germs, and when you have germs, you have a disease, not a new species. And he had been taught that evolution through natural selection occurs by the gradual accumulation, over eons, of single gene mutations."

Have scientists discovered evidence that humans are descended from ape-like ancestors? Are there real"missing link" fossils to prove this? Well, one of the reasons the term "missing link" is what it is, and includes the word missing, is that the evidence has long been—missing. Some have argued that this or that fossil is the "missing link", so we will examine a few of them.

There has been Piltdown Man, which was admittedly a hoax. The teeth were filed, and the bones chemically stained to alter the appearance. Then there was Nebraska Man, which was built out of a pig's tooth. This tooth was presented as evidence for evolution at the famous Scopes trial.

It is suspected that Neanderthal Man was simply a normal human with some medical problems—possibly arthritis, rickets, or acromegaly. Scientists now classify him as human.

But what about the drawings? We see pictures showing the "missing links" with their hairy bodies, their crouching gait, and so forth. Since this is what they looked like, weren't they obviously ancestors of humans? These pictures do show something between a man and an ape; however, the question is not whether the pictures show something between man and ape, but whether the actual creatures looked at all like the pictures. So, did they?

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment."-Sherlock Holmes in a Study of Scarlet

Back in the 1960s, scientists discovered sections of DNA that did not code for proteins. These non-coding DNA strands were assumed to be non-functional and were referred to as "junk" DNA, the presumed evolutionary remnants of ancestral organisms. 1 Almost 99% of human DNA is known to be non-coding.

A little background will facilitate discussion of non-coding DNA. Information in coding DNA sequences is transcribed into mRNA (Figure 1). mRNA exits the nucleus and attaches to ribosomes, the molecular machines that generate proteins. In the ribosome, the information in the mRNA is translated into an amino acid sequence to form a protein.

The bodies of living things are what evolution tries to explain. But what about behavior? Within the evolutionary model, the only possibility is that behavior results from the chemicals, cells, and components of the organism's body. And what about soul? Spirit? Mind? Likewise, these things are viewed in evolution, if they are dealt with at all and not simply ignored, as simply results of chemical or other natural processes in a body.

Is there any evidence for anything beyond the body? Something involved in the operation of our minds? Something that transcends the simple mechanics and natural forces involved in the matter composing our bodies? If so, then this would be something unaccounted for by evolution. If evolution is true, then evolution must have given rise to consciousness. But, first, what is consciousness?

One view that we could take concerning consciousness is that consciousness, or mind, is nothing more than chemical reactions occurring among brain cells. The brain would be analogous to a computer. However, there is a theory that human consciousness is qualitatively different from what computers do. According to this view, something is happening in consciousness that is beyond the ability of science to explain. In particular, this view holds that it is beyond the ability of physics to explain consciousness.

Do we have to ignore scientific evidence in order to accept creation? Some may have felt a conflict between accepting the truth, as discovered by science, and accepting truth, as declared in the Bible. Does accepting one require the rejection of the other?

In this article we look for answers to these questions. A major problem for some has been the feeling that science has proven the theory of evolution. The resulting question then seems to be, "Do we deny truth to accept our faith, or deny our faith to accept the truth (of evolution)?" Fortunately, as it turns out, we can maintain our faith in God without throwing our brains out the window.

In order to proceed, we need to look more closely at what we mean by science, evolution, and truth. We will assume we know what truth is. For example, we probably all understand that the statement, "Pigs can fly" is not true.

For our purposes, "evolution" is the theory that species developed from other species. It is not the thing we see occurring in breeding of animals, for here, there is no change from one species to another. We do see selection of traits, but they are pre-existing and already within the gene pool for that species. Evolution claims that one species evolved from another, including the proposition that man evolved from non-human animals.

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson's new book Replacing Darwin: the New Origin of Species 1 was released in October of 2017. Jeanson holds a doctorate in cell and developmental biology from Harvard (2009). He joined the staff at the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in 2009 but has since moved to Answers in Genesis (AIG) where he is a research biologist, author, and speaker. Jeanson has written numerous lay articles, book chapters, and technical papers in secular and creationist journals. 2 He has also debated several evolutionists. 3

In Replacing Darwin, Jeanson shows how the known data and principles of genetics fit biblical history as understood by young earth creationists (YECs). He develops a testable model of speciation consistent with Genesis and makes predictions. Jeason provides sufficient backgrounds in basic biochemistry and genetics for non-specialists to grasp his arguments. He has uncovered interesting relationships between speciation and time for several biological families.

The book includes copious endnotes and graphical illustrations, references, a glossary, but no index.